WISEMAN, NICHOLAS PATRICK STEPHEN (1802-65). An English Roman Catholic prelate. He was born at Seville, of an Irish family. He was brought to Ireland in his childhood, and re ceived his education at the College of Saint Cuthbert at Ushaw, near Durham, and at the English College at Rome. He received holy orders at Rome in 1824, and was appointed pro fessor of Oriental language in the University of the Sapienza, 1828, in recognition of the value of his !torte Syriacce. and in the end of that year was named rector of the English College. It was while he held this office that he delivered his Lectures on the Connection of Science and Revealed Religion (1836). But in England he first became known by a series of lectures on The Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church. delivered at Moorfields Church (ISM, 3d ed. 1851). In 1836 he established, in concert with Daniel O'Connell, t he Dub lin Review, to which Wiseman, even while residing abroad, was a regular contributor. In 1840 he was named coadjutor vicar apostolic of the central district of England, with the title of Bishop of Alelipotamus. At the same time he was appointed president of Saint Mary's College, Oseott, where he took up his residence. In 1850,
when the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England was restored by the Pope, he was made Arch bishop of Westminster and cardinal. While ex citement among the Protestant part of the popu lation was at its height, Wiseman published an explanatory address of great ability and modera jion, but yet firmly asserting the strictly con stitutional rights of his fellow-Catholics, entitled An Appeal to the Reason and Good Peeling of the People of England on the Subject of the Catholic hierarchy (1850), which did much to mitigate the exeitement. Ile published numerous volumes upon controversial and literary topics, hut they are mostly forgotten. Two, however, seem destined to live: Recollections of the Last Four Popes [Pius VII., Leo X11., Pius VIII., and Gregory XVI.] (1858), and /'abiola, or the I% UM', of the Catacombs ( 1854 ) . the best known Roman Catholic story in English upon this theme. Consult his Life by W. Ward (Lon don, 1897, 2d ed. 1900) ; Fitzgerald, Fifty Years of Catholic Progress (London, 1900).